I don't really hear any kind of substantive difference between Clinton and Obama. Whatever they are doing now to try to differentiate would all come out in the wash at the White house, where each one would be constrained by reality and have to modify plans anyway. But substantive differences are not the only kinds that matter. Clinton and Obama each personify a mood, innocence and experience, so to speak. Mood does matter. It exerts a constant force on all decisions. eg. the Bush Administration chose a mood of resolute intransigence. When things were murky and the right decision was unclear, they would default to that hard-line mood of dead certainty and polarization.

So what mood does America need now? Clinton - pragmatic, connected, horse-trader and political insider? She doesn't project innocence, but the US is not really seen as innocent around the world, so maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe a realpolitik mood is fine. At home, the health care system is not seen as innocent, all the players in the illegal immigrant drama are painted with different mixes of innocence and guilt by different parties... taxation is not an area where innocence or idealism have much traction... Maybe we should get real and stay with Clinton.

Or maybe what we need is someone who will restore America's innocence and its good name around the world, and who will try to create a new deal and a new social contract here in America. All this talk of newness and hope can be seen as a yearning for a lost innocence in US politics. So is it good and important, or naive and silly?

Innocence and experience, each supporting essentially the same platform. So which mood do we trust?